Historically, English was the sole official language of Hong Kong from 1883 to 1974. Only after demonstrations and petitions from Hong Kong people demanding equal status for Chinese,[2] did Chinese become the other official language in Hong Kong from 1974 onward. In March 1987, the Official Languages Ordinance was amended to require all new legislation to be enacted bilingually in both English and Chinese. In 1990, the Hong Kong Basic Law declared English's co-official language status with Chinese after the 1997 handover.

China has numerous variants of spoken Chinese, many of which are mutually unintelligible. Most are only used in their own native areas, while some like the dialects of Guangdong and Fujian have spread to other areas as a result of emigration.

The Tanka people (蜑家人/疍家人/水上人) from the fishing villages is another group of Hong Kong indigenous people. Their language, Tanka(蜑家話/疍家話/水上話), with their own variation of Cantonese, is another form of Hong Kong indigenous languages. It is commonly spoken by the middle age and old Tanka people now.

In many villages in New Territories and within Hong Kong Hakka ethnic communities, Hakka (客家話) is commonly used by the Hakka people (客家人) since Hakka is one of the indigenous languages for Hong Kong indigenous people.[7][8] Nowadays, There are little young Hakka Hong Kong people who are able to speak Hakka Chinese fluently and for daily conversations in Hong Kong.

Despite the continuous effort of Chinese governments (including those of Imperial, Republic and Communist China) to promote Mandarin as the official dialect (or, to some extent, Lingua franca) within mainland China and the Sinophone world, many ethnic Chinese still maintain at least one native language for informal uses in addition to formal Mandarin.

A similar phenomenon is seen in Chinese living in Hong Kong, but with English still as the formal language. Most of the people in Hong Kong maintain at least one native Chinese variety for informal use in addition to the formal language. From the mid-19th century to the late-20th century, a majority of Hong Kong people had Cantonese as their native Chinese language and spoke English as the official language.

In the late 20th century, mainland China's economic situation improved under Deng Xiaoping's economic reform, and is now an "emerging superpower".[9][10] After the 1997 handover, Hong Kong developed closer economic ties with the rest of China. The Hong Kong government started to promote the use Mandarin as a business skill. Mandarin became a subject in many primary schools beginning in 1998, and was integrated into the HKCEE examinations in 2000. The government of Hong Kong has encouraged students to be "biliterate and trilingual",[11] thus adding Mandarin to one of the essential languages. In fact, Mandarin has become an important business language for adults and the usage of Mandarin has been introduced to public service announcements in Hong Kong, such as public transportation.

According to Hong Kong Census in 2011, 89.5% of the population in Hong Kong speak Cantonese.[4] Besides, there is around 4% of the population (about 300,000 Hong Kong people) speak varieties of Chinese Chinese varieties other than Mandarin and Cantonese, which include Hakka, Teochew, Tanka, Punti, and Shanghainese, etc., in daily conversations.[4] For Mandarin, at least 1.4% of Hong Kong citizens speak a variety of Mandarin as daily use at home.[4]

Hong Kong uses the standard written Chinese based on Standard Chinese, which is the standard and formal written language for all Chinese speakers. However, written Chinese is distinct from spoken Cantonese in both grammar and vocabulary.

There is also a written language based on the vocabulary and grammar of spoken Cantonese known as written Cantonese (粵文). Although the "biliterate and trilingual" policy implies an absence of support for written Cantonese, it has gained popularity in news media where entertainment and local news are related. However, written Cantonese is unintelligible to non-Cantonese speakers and is considered nonstandard by educators despite its widespread usage in Hong Kong. Written Cantonese does not have a standard set of characters but has a de facto standard built though convention. Some have also credited written Cantonese for solving the challenges that standard written Chinese had faced in popular culture.

Traditional Chinese characters are widely used, and are the de facto writing standard in Hong Kong. However, there are also locale vulgar characters (俗字) in addition to Simplified Chinese characters. Simplified Chinese is seen in posters, leaflets, flyers, and signs in the tourist areas. Students are also permitted to use Simplified Characters in time-constrained exams. Nevertheless, Hong Kong people feel a sense of cultural attachment to Traditional Chinese, and the Hong Kong government is unlikely to abandon them in the foreseeable future.

English is a major working language in Hong Kong, and is widely used in commercial activities and legal matters. Although the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the PRC by the United Kingdom in 1997, English remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong as enshrined in the Basic Law.

Many Hong Kong peopleuse both Cantonese and English, or "code-switch", in the same sentence when speaking. For example, "唓，都唔 make sense!" ("Wow, that made no sense!"). The code-switching can freely mix English words and Chinese grammar, for instance "你 Un 唔 Un ?" ("Do you understand?") (not a common use) which follows the Chinese grammar syntax 'verb - 唔 - verb' to ask "Do you (verb)?". Notice also the shortening of 'understand' to 'un' since most Cantonese verbs are single syllables.

Some code-switched words are used so often that they have become loanwords in Cantonese,[12] for example,

Before 1997, Cantonese pronunciation was the basis for transliterating English proper names into Chinese. After the handover, however, the media in Hong Kong began to adopt already established transliterations based on Mandarin pronunciations to align with China. For example, Houston, which used to be transliterated as 候斯頓 (Jyutping: hau6 si1 deon6), has now become 休斯頓 (jau1 si1 deon6), and San Diego, formerly 聖地牙哥 (sing3 dei6 ngaa4 go1), has become 聖迭戈 (sing3 dit6 gwo1). In some cases the Mandarin-based transliteration sounds far from the original when pronounced in Cantonese. For example, Wal-Mart is transliterated as 沃爾瑪 (pinyin: wòěrmǎ); when pronounced in Cantonese, the name becomes juk1 ji5 maa5.

This is a cup pad used in a western restaurant called "Das Gute" in Sha Tin, Hong Kong. Note that the name of the restaurant, as well as the words on the cup pad, are in German.

The exact number of German speakers in Hong Kong is about 5000, significant enough for the establishment of the German Swiss International School (Deutsch-Schweizerische Internationale Schule), which claims to number more than 1,000 students, at The Peak of Hong Kong Island.[14] Many institutions in Hong Kong provide German courses. The most well-known one is the Goethe-Institut, which is located in Wan Chai. After spending a certain period in learning German, students can take the German Test as a Foreign Language (Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache; TestDaF for short) and Start German A1-C2. There are currently two test centres for TestDaF in Hong Kong: the Goethe-Institut and the Hong Kong Baptist University. The latter one also offers a European Studies degree course of German Stream, Bachelor of Social Science in European Studies (German Stream), in parallel with the French stream. A minor program of German is offered at the Language Centre of HKBU. The Hong Kong University is offering a Major in German after 4 years of study. The Chinese University is offering a Minor in German and popular summer courses. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is offering German for science and technology.

The signboard of the shopping mall Nu Front at Causeway Bay. The character 站, replaced by 駅 in the name, also appears, serving as a footnote.

Japanese culture, especially the popular culture, has been popular in Hong Kong for decades. Hong Kong people occasionally replace Chinese characters with Japanese. In addition, the Companies Registry also permits the hiraganaの (no) in Chinese business names that are registered in Hong Kong.[17] The hiragana の is usually used in place of the Chinese character 之 (zi1) and read as such in Hong Kong. In fact, Aji Ichiban has adopted の in their company name (優の良品). There are also borrowings from Japanese shinjitaikanji駅 (eki) to substitute 站 (zaam6, both 站 and 駅 means "station" in their respective languages), as in Nu Front (東角駅), a shopping mall for Hong Kong youngsters in Causeway Bay. There are also some private estates named with the kanji 駅. These loanwords are pronounced by Hong Kong people as if they were their Chinese counterparts (i.e. の as 之, and 駅 as 站). The Japanese Kanji 駅 is the shinjitai of the Chinese character 驛 (jik6). However, 驛 has fallen out of usage to 站 in modern Chinese and became obsolete. Therefore, it is not uncommon to mispronounce 駅 as its phonetic compound 尺 (cek3).

Koreans in Hong Kong only make up a small minority while Korean culture has gained popularity since the early 2000s. Korean pop music was the first Korean media to enter Hong Kong's market. Since then, several Korean TV series such as Dae Jang Geum have been broadcast to numerous audiences.[18] There are roughly 1,000 students that took Korean courses at the Chinese University of Hong Kong each year, including undergraduates as well as professionals who enrolled in continuing education programs. Roughly 3,000 people have taken the Test of Proficiency in Korean since its introduction to Hong Kong in 2003.[19] Surveys and statistics from course enrollments have shown that nine-tenths of the students studying Korean in Hong Kong are female.[20]

The Vietnamese-language broadcasts made by the Hong Kong government in 1988 announced that Hong Kong was going to receive no more Vietnamese refugees. It has since become part of the collective memory to many Hong Kong people living in that era. The beginning words, "Bắt đầu từ nay", which mean "from now on", are probably the only Vietnamese phrase that most non-Vietnamese in Hong Kong know. The phrase Bắt đầu từ nay was used by some locals to disparagingly refer to the Vietnamese people.

According to the 2006 By-Census, there were at least 44,744 persons of South Asian descent in Hong Kong.[22] Signboards written in Hindi or Urdu can be seen, and conversation in South Asian languages including Nepali, Sindhi and Punjabi, as well as Urdu, Hindi and Tamil can be heard.

Hong Kong has two Nepalese newspapers, The Everest and the Sunrise Weekly Hong Kong. In 2004, the Home Affairs Bureau and Metro Plus AM 1044 jointly launched radio shows Hong Kong-Pak Tonight in Urdu and Harmo Sagarmatha in Nepalese.[23]